nVidia GeForce Partner Program: Well Intention Marketing or Anti-Competitive

[asus killer]

1 hour ago, Carclis said:

Just a few examples...

 

EVGA deals exclusively with Nvidia and as such has no reason to oppose the agreement. It brings nothing but perks and will put them at a significant advantage compared to the competition (if they don't also join). This means joining the program is basically mandatory.

Asus has their ROG brand which has been around since 2006. Asus has spent twelve years investing in and growing their brand which aims to provide quality gaming to customers. Now Nvidia is telling them to split their brand up and just make a new one so that it can continue to sell the competitions products, and all this to get benefits and perks that it used to receive without having to exclude AMD. So at this point who owns ROG, Nvidia or Asus?

 

Alienware is Dells gaming brand. If you don't build systems then you are likely going to rely on a company like this to provide you with a gaming PC. What the GPP means to companies like Alienware is that they must cut AMD out completely. So Alienware has to choose whether or not to make more money by joining the GPP or to offer more consumer choice and forego all the benefits of the GPP.
 

What is being offered here in all of these cases is an ultimatum. EVGA is already under Nvidias thumb and has no reason not to agree to be a partner which in turn forces all the others into the line (if they want to be competitive). They can say no of course but they will be less profitable and that would be working contrary to the goal of a company. So basically Nvidia (if all of this turns out to be accurate) is resorting to excluding AMD from the market instead of choosing to compete with them on the merits of their products. That is by definition anti-competitive behaviour.

i don't think alienware applies because it's a full PC not a partner brand for a card. I think it only applies to AIB's . If that was true the it would be more problematic. Still ROG brands cards and full PC's so it might be confusing, i bet it only applies to Strix and not ROG. But i'm guessing and trying to make sense out of this.

 

Regarding the rest as to a strict business sense it actually makes sense not to want Strix for example to be a brand for amd and nvidia because this companies spend a lot of money to distinguish themselves and it certainly can create some brand confusion to uninformed consumer that may want a Strix card and not care or even know if it is nvidia or amd. They certainly don't want to allow this and i bet it's what Nvidia is after. They want consumers to choose Nvidia and that there is no confusing between their gpu and amd's gpu's. Distinguish themselves.

I'm not defending Nvidia, still trying to see the other side of this issue.

 

But this is something that makes sense and in court would actually not get them into any trouble. Stopping or even trying to stop Amd chips on alienware pc's that would be a different issue, and i don't think Nvidia or their lawyers are that insane.

 

I still don't see a big issue, all partners would create a new sub brand for amd, and i think it's a useless move by Nvidia as most buyers of this product are not blindly buying strix, but the actual bundle.

[leadeater]

27 minutes ago, asus killer said:

Regarding the rest as to a strict business sense it actually makes sense not to want Strix for example to be a brand for amd and nvidia because this companies spend a lot of money to distinguish themselves and it certainly can create some brand confusion to uninformed consumer that may want a Strix card and not care or even know if it is nvidia or amd.

It's potentially not Strix, it could be all of ROG. Imagine if zero AMD products are allowed to be under the ROG branding because that is Asus's core gaming branding, which GPP is implying must be aligned with only them.

 

There's a lot of products under the ROG branding and if they must align all of those to Nvidia then they all basically become Nvidia advertising. You'll see things on the boxes like "Game read with Nvidia" for a motherboard but no mention of AMD anywhere on it even though it would work perfectly fine with an AMD GPU.

 

If it's a requirement to use a different sub naming under ROG that's not as bad but not that good either, it's terrible if Nvidia can force Asus to only use Strix for Nvidia cards or to create and use a new different one. Who ever gets to use the Strix branding gets the advantage as it's established and trusted which buyers will look out for.

 

Edit:

As was mentioned on the WAN show even though we'll never likely see the GPP terms we'll see the end result so we will be able to see how it plays out. We'll notice very quickly if AMD products stop coming under ROG or a new product brand name comes out. We won't get to figure everything out but we will be able to see some of it just from looking at the market.

Edited March 17, 2018 by leadeater

[Carclis]

14 hours ago, asus killer said:

i don't think alienware applies because it's a full PC not a partner brand for a card. I think it only applies to AIB's . If that was true the it would be more problematic. Still ROG brands cards and full PC's so it might be confusing, i bet it only applies to Strix and not ROG. But i'm guessing and trying to make sense out of this.

 

Regarding the rest as to a strict business sense it actually makes sense not to want Strix for example to be a brand for amd and nvidia because this companies spend a lot of money to distinguish themselves and it certainly can create some brand confusion to uninformed consumer that may want a Strix card and not care or even know if it is nvidia or amd. They certainly don't want to allow this and i bet it's what Nvidia is after. They want consumers to choose Nvidia and that there is no confusing between their gpu and amd's gpu's. Distinguish themselves.

I'm not defending Nvidia, still trying to see the other side of this issue.

 

But this is something that makes sense and in court would actually not get them into any trouble. Stopping or even trying to stop Amd chips on alienware pc's that would be a different issue, and i don't think Nvidia or their lawyers are that insane.

 

I still don't see a big issue, all partners would create a new sub brand for amd, and i think it's a useless move by Nvidia as most buyers of this product are not blindly buying strix, but the actual bundle.

From the HardOCP article: 
 

Quote

The crux of the issue with NVIDIA GPP comes down to a single requirement in order to be part of GPP. In order to have access to the GPP program, its partners must have its "Gaming Brand Aligned Exclusively With GeForce." I have read documents with this requirement spelled out on it.

Quote

HardOCP has been in the computer hardware review business for over 20 years now, and we have made an abundance of contacts along the way. In order for our preparation to write this article, we have spent the last three weeks talking to OEMs and AIBs in the industry that do business with NVIDIA on a large scale. Given how GPP is all about "transparency," you might think that those OEMs and AIBs would be chomping at the bit to get some free press on how those companies are part of the GPP program.

Both OEMS and AIBs can be parters and should be in the best interest of the respective companies. Being a partner is simply an option available to any company who wishes to sell a product containing Nvidias hardware.

 

It only makes sense to segregate gaming brands in the eyes of Nvidia. For companies like Asus and MSI it only serves to split their marketing budget. There is no good reason that Asus for instance would want to separate their AMD and Nvidia products since all of the contribute to the strong overall reputation that ROG has. There was even a quote in the HardOCP article earlier which must have been removed that stated that no companies that Kyle spoke to were happy about the terms of the agreement.

 

There are two sides to this whole branding problem. You have people who, as you pointed out, are uninformed and may not know that a card is AMD or Nvidia, the fools who buy rely on brand recognition, the free customers Nvidia will get as a result of this move. Then you have the informed customers that know one GPU from another and understand that brand is not entirely important. For these informed customers not much will change. There will be separate brands between AMD and Nvidia and that’s about it because at this point they already knew the difference between a red box and a green box and they understood that x80 must be better than x60 etc (and of course they researched benchmarks). Then of course you have to consider that the difference of the box art is far greater between AMD and Nvidia than it is between products within the brand and the exact opposite holds true when regarding performance.For this reason Nvidias transparency argument does not hold water.

 

Also:

Quote

ll of the people that I did interview at AIBs and at OEMs did however have the same thoughts on GPP. 1.) They think that it has terms that are likely illegal. 2.) GPP is likely going to tremendously hurt consumers' choices. 3.) It will disrupt business with the companies that they are currently doing business with, namely AMD and Intel.

Edit: made my point clearer

[asus killer]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

It's potentially not Strix, it could be all of ROG. Imagine if zero AMD products are allowed to be under the ROG branding because that is Asus's core gaming branding, which GPP is implying must be aligned with only them.

 

There's a lot of products under the ROG branding and if they must align all of those to Nvidia then they all basically become Nvidia advertising. You'll see things on the boxes like "Game read with Nvidia" for a motherboard but no mention of AMD anywhere on it even though it would work perfectly fine with an AMD GPU.

 

If it's a requirement to use a different sub naming under ROG that's not as bad but not that good either, it's terrible if Nvidia can force Asus to only use Strix for Nvidia cards or to create and use a new different one. Who ever gets to use the Strix branding gets the advantage as it's established and trusted which buyers will look out for.

 

Edit:

As was mentioned on the WAN show even though we'll never likely see the GPP terms we'll see the end result so we will be able to see how it plays out. We'll notice very quickly if AMD products stop coming under ROG or a new product brand name comes out. We won't get to figure everything out but we will be able to see some of it just from looking at the market.

it could be ROG, i'm still not convinced it's that kind of move. If you look at a strix card, most of the branding in the box is actually strix. ROG occupies a lot less space on the box. That's what they don't want, and being on the side of the devil, i still think it makes marketing sense because it washes the separation of amd and nvidia brands. And the boxes are really similar comparing 1080ti and vega for example.

It's more marketing needs than actually trying some evil move in my opinion

 

 

37 minutes ago, Carclis said:

From the HardOCP article: 
 

Both OEMS and AIBs can be parters and should be in the best interest of the respective companies. Being a partner is simply an option available to any company who wishes to sell a product containing Nvidias hardware.

 

It only makes sense to segregate gaming brands in the eyes of Nvidia. For companies like Asus and MSI it only serves to split their marketing budget. There is no good reason that Asus for instance would want to separate their AMD and Nvidia products since all of the contribute to the strong overall reputation that ROG has. There was even a quote in the HardOCP article earlier which must have been removed that stated that no companies that Kyle spoke to were happy about the terms of the agreement.

 

In the case of your argument that the uninformed customer should be able to get an Nvidia card by purchasing a ROG Strix card. Well that's not exactly fair since the customer is specifically buying an ROG Strix product based on their desire to have that brands product and cooler. What gives Nvidia the right to monopolise a brand owned by Asus? And would somebody as uninformed as the person in your description not be disappointed by their ROG Strix card if they accidentally bought a 1050 instead of a 1080? After all the difference of the box art is far greater between AMD and Nvidia than it is between products within the brand.

 

Also:

As for your remarks about forcing AIBs and OEMs to create new gaming brands being a useless move by Nvidia. Well it will give them the freebie customers, the fools who buy rely on brand recognition instead of looking up reviews every generation, the less tech-literate. People who purchase Alienware for instance are the perfect example of this and are one of the reasons why it's quite a dangerous move. It's also quite expensive to create a new brand so I don't expect AMD products to get much of a spotlight under the new gaming brand names.

 

If it affects the alienware example you gave then i must change my position, it's a shitty move.

But as pure marketing you never want your brand to be washed by strix or whatever, i still bet that's all that is in place here. Still i can be wrong, it happened in the past .

I didn't even consider something like this could affect the alienware case because it would be going from "it kind of makes sense" to "this people are insane", it's a big leap as a video card is very different from a full pc, it was lots of other brands involved, a video card is nvidia and the brand the partners creates for it and that's it.

[Misanthrope]

Hehehehe: What's the problem? Nvidia pushing this with the GPP is literally the market regulating itself: this is what happens under a completely free market the bigger company attempts to become a monopoly by forcing out competitors through any means because that's literally the most cost effective competitive advantage: the ultimate innovation is to remove innovation as a factor from opponents.

[Razor01]

1 hour ago, Carclis said:

 

In the case of your argument that the uninformed customer should be able to get an Nvidia card by purchasing a ROG Strix card. Well that's not exactly fair since the customer is specifically buying an ROG Strix product based on their desire to have that brands product and cooler. What gives Nvidia the right to monopolise a brand owned by Asus? And would somebody as uninformed as the person in your description not be disappointed by their ROG Strix card if they accidentally bought a 1050 instead of a 1080? After all the difference of the box art is far greater between AMD and Nvidia than it is between products within the brand.

 

That is the dangers of co and sub branding.  Which brand is stronger now, ROG or Geforce?   Geforce has 70% of the market, people want nV cards, they don't want AMD cards for gaming.  So in light of that, nV, Geforce has the pull, and this pull is being used to in nV's best interest with AIB's and OEM's. 

 

If you had an extremely popular product, and you gave it out under contract to sell from other companies, don't you want to keep its brand, its look, its marketing, the way you want it. 

 

How many times have we see things like this.  Many many times. The product owner has the complete right to do what he or she wants with their product.  ROG is not a product, its a brand.  The products in that brand sell that brand.  Let it be AMD, Intel, motherboards, Cases, what ever.  But when you have a singular piece that has market dominance, is what people want, they don't look at another companies product, it potential of branding "power" is much greater then anything else in that stack.  The rest of the product stack can actually be detrimental to the sale of that product.  This has been proven time and time again.  Sales and advertising by association of the product rather then the actual results of that product.  It might not be justified with geforce graphics cards, but its a true risk of co branded, sub branded products.

 

Now nV can ask AIB's to have their "main gaming brand" exclusive to their hardware at least for graphic cards, AIB's don't need to accept this, but if they don't no GPP for them is what the article is saying.  Yes nV can ask for that.  Nothing wrong with that. 

 

We still don't know how definition of all these are setup and the context of that sentence that was shared so its kinda moot even to presume this is the case at the moment.  Specially since Kyle muttered other words about this very specific thing which seems to contradict to what he stated in that video interview.

 

 

 

[pas008]

Is this discussion constantly repeating itself?

 

 

[Misanthrope]

Just now, pas008 said:

Is this discussion constantly repeating itself?

 

 

That's usually the case in any thread past 4 or 5 pages or so.

[WMGroomAK]

2 hours ago, pas008 said:

Is this discussion constantly repeating itself?

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

That's usually the case in any thread past 4 or 5 pages or so.

Great chance to practice Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V keyboard commands...

[asus killer]

for my part sorry if it was me that made the topic go on a loop, i did not read the 11 pages, just wanted to comment because of the WAN show mentioning it. 

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Hehehehe: What's the problem? Nvidia pushing this with the GPP is literally the market regulating itself: this is what happens under a completely free market the bigger company attempts to become a monopoly by forcing out competitors through any means because that's literally the most cost effective competitive advantage: the ultimate innovation is to remove innovation as a factor from opponents.

A free market is not the same as a laissez faire market.

[Misanthrope]

2 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

A free market is not the same as a laissez faire market.

Yet most people have said that this is totally ok since these are luxury goods.

 

So absolutely free market should be a.o.k. here should it not? Or do we need regulations here? And if so why don't we need more if they're clearly not enough to stop Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, etc. ?

 

Even the E.U. with their seemingly massive fines barely make even a small dent to their profits or impose lasting consequences.

[XenosTech]

16 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Even the E.U. with their seemingly massive fines barely make even a small dent to their profits or impose lasting consequences.

Until a country outright bans the sale of their products they don't care because they'll still make more money than the fines add up to over a period of time

[hobobobo]

18 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Yet most people have said that this is totally ok since these are luxury goods.

 

So absolutely free market should be a.o.k. here should it not? Or do we need regulations here? And if so why don't we need more if they're clearly not enough to stop Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, etc. ?

 

Even the E.U. with their seemingly massive fines barely make even a small dent to their profits or impose lasting consequences.

Hey hey hey, carefull there, its not long to end up on the path that leads to the thoughts that communism is not completly bad. And we dont want that, do we? Better dead then red, eh?

 

On a more serious note, without a serious reform to IP laws, mandating a code of conduct for market behaviour there is no way to end this. No matter how high the fine is or how severe the punishment, there is always a way around. The higher the fine the more acceptable it is to spend outlandish amounts of money on lobbying/bribing or just dragging out investigations for decades. In a more out-there case, you can just crash the currency market before paying the fine, its not like there are no examples of fines being covered at suspicioucly opportune market conditions

[pas008]

I still find it funny

Company wants to align their products with partners and have typical partnership incentives

They aren't blocking competition or fucking over its customers so what's the problem lol

[Razor01]

2 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

On a more serious note, without a serious reform to IP laws, mandating a code of conduct for market behaviour there is no way to end this. No matter how high the fine is or how severe the punishment, there is always a way around. The higher the fine the more acceptable it is to spend outlandish amounts of money on lobbying/bribing or just dragging out investigations for decades. In a more out-there case, you can just crash the currency market before paying the fine, its not like there are no examples of fines being covered at suspicioucly opportune market conditions

code of conduct is ethics, it really doesn't have a place is law.  Ethics is based on how one feels its right or wrong which promotes conduct.

 

Law doesn't promote conduct, it says what is there, that is it.

[Razor01]

8 minutes ago, pas008 said:

I still find it funny

Company wants to align their products with partners and have typical partnership incentives

They aren't blocking competition or fucking over its customers so what's the problem lol

 

 

Well I can see people's points of views are but that doesn't even hold water, in the future if some else comes out with a product that can compete well?  But the flip side to that is, this agreement won't even be worth the paper its written on then.

 

Hypothetically Intel comes out in 3 years time with a GPU that matches nV, Who is going to have the power then?  nV, where Intel is monster company where nV will be shelling peanuts?  Will this program matter much?  I don't think so. 

 

The only company that is really affected by this is the one that complained about it to the press to begin with.  AMD.  And of course the AIB's which are under nV's thumb now because AMD wasn't able to deliver with Vega and Polaris in the gaming market.

 

Times change they need to role with the punches.  Complaining about isn't going to change anything, either take them to court and resolve it in a favorable manner or focus on your products and make them better so that the program has no legs to stand on.

 

Also anyone thinking this against Kaby lake g, lol, really that is Intel (this is not Intel + AMD, its just Intel, Intel bought those GPU, they had them custom made just for them), Intel can create a program and do all those things nV does and more, much more if they want to, just segregating out notebooks, or ultra gaming books or what ever they want to call them.  What is stopping them if nV is doing it?  We saw them do it in the past in a much more brutal way.

[hobobobo]

12 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

code of conduct is ethics, it really doesn't have a place is law.  Ethics is based on how one feels its right or wrong which promotes conduct.

 

Law doesn't promote conduct, it says what is there, that is it.

Maybe i worded it wrong, but you can directly tie certain market behaviours to economic ramifications. What i mean is a strict set of rules on interactions between market agents (perhpas beyond certain size/market share) with rigid definitions for everything. It is a dangerous thing to do, since if done wrong it may become needlessly opressive. What a mean, basically, limit the freedom of corporations, their power already rivals that of mid-size goverments and its gonna get bigger. I would enjoy seeing them straigh up broken up, but its next to impossible without reforming ip laws.

 

And to say law doesnt promote conduct is to say the 10 commandments dont promote conduct. To make a more or less extreme example - antidemping laws, they directly promote "honest" pricing. Or hatespeech laws, despite how stupid i consider them, promote a certain way of expression.

[pas008]

How does this block or stifle its competitor amd?

This is just screwing over few of its already established partners by aligning a product more which some are amds partners

They aren't telling them to not sell their product so how is amd affected

[hobobobo]

35 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

-snip-

On a completly unrelated note, we talked about china dram manufacturers, i was not able to ask my teacher during my lessons, but she got back to me today with two names - Hua Hong Semi and Shanghai Huali

[Razor01]

21 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

Maybe i worded it wrong, but you can directly tie certain market behaviours to economic ramifications. What i mean is a strict set of rules on interactions between market agents (perhpas beyond certain size/market share) with rigid definitions for everything. It is a dangerous thing to do, since if done wrong it may become needlessly opressive. What a mean, basically, limit the freedom of corporations, their power already rivals that of mid-size goverments and its gonna get bigger. I would enjoy seeing them straigh up broken up, but its next to impossible without reforming ip laws.

 

And to say law doesnt promote conduct is to say the 10 commandments dont promote conduct. To make a more or less extreme example - antidemping laws, they directly promote "honest" pricing. Or hatespeech laws, despite how stupid i consider them, promote a certain way of expression.

FTC has those guidelines in place already.  The reason why the courts get involved is if those guidelines are broken.

 

Its much more complicated, because the courts have to protect the legal rights of commercial speak, which is part of the 1st amendment.  The FTC regulates IP as well based on those guidelines.  Then you also have executive orders that can supersede FTC guidelines lol.  There is a lot to it.  The courts can over turn executive orders or forge differences within the FTC guidelines.

 

Is there a certain code of conduct when a company does something, yes there is, its already there, when they cross that line, it needs to be asked, did they break the law.  Then the overseeing bodies step in.  First the FTC will step in and do the investigation, then if there is anything viable to take to court, then the courts look into who is in the right and who is in the wrong.   This is all from an advertising point of view.  Now from a tort law point of view its different, FTC doesn't get involved in that unless there is a direct link to anti competitive or anti trust relationship.  There needs to be strong evidence for them to even consider taking on such a case too.  Which is something I mentioned before, either damages have been done and can be pointed to or the contract that would cause such damages, is out right illegal to begin with.

 

[hobobobo]

19 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

FTC has those guidelines in place already.  The reason why the courts get involved is if those guidelines are broken.

 

Its much more complicated, because the courts have to protect the legal rights of commercial speak, which is part of the 1st amendment.  The FTC regulates IP as well based on those guidelines.  Then you also have executive orders that can supersede FTC guidelines lol.  There is a lot to it.  The courts can over turn executive orders or forge differences within the FTC guidelines.

 

Is there a certain code of conduct when a company does something, yes there is, its already there, when they cross that line, it needs to be asked, did they break the law.  Then the overseeing bodies step in.

Im by no means an expert in this, not even an amateur, but to me FTC guidelines and policies seems lacking, at best. I also do not understand how commercial speach can be protected under the first amandment. Marketing speech is already as close to outright lying and missleading as it can get, and i would very much like to see the current situation being reversed, with burden of proof on the legitimacy of commercial claims being put on the corporations, basically the way it is with administrative crimes in Russia, guilty until proven innocent. That freedom of speech mumbojumbo is great for individuals, its outright cancerous for commercial entities. It escapes me how law can treat corporations as individuals, when by the defenition of the word corporation (or just reality of it) they are not. Id argue that it could be said that a corporation of a certain size, as in those "too big to fail", is an extra-govermental entitie beholdent only to god knows who(well, the shareholders, but they do not bear any responsibilities for the actions undertaken by the company and as a result of that not concerned with the activities, beyond the bottomline), and are already crossing into the realm of being their own self-contained states.

 

 

Edit: I understand that this sounds a bit, perhaps, radical, and is probably wrong on some accounts, but i currently dont possess any knowledge to indicate to me otherwise

 

[Razor01]

15 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

Im by no means an expert in this, not even an amateur, but to me FTC guidelines and policies seems lacking, at best. I also do not understand how commercial speach can be protected under the first amandment. Marketing speech is already as close to outright lying and missleading as it can get, and i would very much like to see the current situation being reversed, with burden of proof on the legitimacy of commercial claims being put on the corporations, basically the way it is with administrative crimes in Russia, guilty until proven innocent. That freedom of speech mumbojumbo is great for individuals, its outright cancerous for commercial entities. It escapes me how law can treat corporations as individuals, when by the defenition of the word corporation (or just reality of it) they are not. Id argue that it could be said that a corporation of a certain size, as in those "too big to fail", is an extra-govermental entitie beholdent only to god knows who(well, the shareholders, but they do not bear any responsibilities for the actions undertaken by the company and as a result of that not concerned with the activities, beyond the bottomline), and are already crossing into the realm of being their own self-contained states.

 

 

 

The FTC guidelines are lax for a certain reason, having them ridged also creates for problems because it stops innovation and creativeness.

 

Hey I agree with ya on market speech its damn close to out right crap lol.  But its protected.  FTC has guidelines on that too.  But changing an amendment is not easy to do.

 

The reason why anti trust is not easy to take to court.

 

When ever we see things like anti trust or anti competitive practices are taken to court, its not just a singular thing that the offending company does.  Its a multitude of abuses. 

 

Three things must happen for anti trust to be upheld by the law.

1)  The company must have enough marketshare to be deemed a monopoly, and that market share gained was due to anti competitive tactics

2)  The company must exhibit that they are doing things that will further enhance their monopoly by hurting other companies directly (this can not be because of direct competition, it must by by other means)

3)  Deliberately stopping competition in the market place which will hurt the consumer directly.

 

Anti competitive lawsuits are closely tied with anti trust behavior lol.

[laminutederire]

4 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

Im by no means an expert in this, not even an amateur, but to me FTC guidelines and policies seems lacking, at best. I also do not understand how commercial speach can be protected under the first amandment. Marketing speech is already as close to outright lying and missleading as it can get, and i would very much like to see the current situation being reversed, with burden of proof on the legitimacy of commercial claims being put on the corporations, basically the way it is with administrative crimes in Russia, guilty until proven innocent. That freedom of speech mumbojumbo is great for individuals, its outright cancerous for commercial entities. It escapes me how law can treat corporations as individuals, when by the defenition of the word corporation (or just reality of it) they are not. Id argue that it could be said that a corporation of a certain size, as in those "too big to fail", is an extra-govermental entitie beholdent only to god knows who(well, the shareholders, but they do not bear any responsibilities for the actions undertaken by the company and as a result of that not concerned with the activities, beyond the bottomline), and are already crossing into the realm of being their own self-contained states.

 

 

Corporations has been the pillar of the American economy and one of the biggest issues with the world's economy for a few decades now. I saw a documentary back when the subprime crisis happened. The issue with corporations in America is that they are considered as persons  for the most part, which means that in the way the operate there is a strong and utterly irresponsible lack of accountability from persons inside the corporations. I think it explains well why there is so much people can find to hate about big American companies.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, laminutederire said:

I saw a documentary back when the subprime crisis happened.

Without getting too derailed from the topic, the subprime market crash was caused by federal interference from Fannie Mae (FNMA) & Freddie Mac (FMCC), both of which are government entities.  They forced lenders to offer those unsustainable loans to people who should never have been approved.